The “One Thing”
In Luke 10:42, the Lord tells us all: “There is need of only one thing…” Hence, let us attempt to find that ONE THING which we all need. For as long as we do not find that ONE THING, or we get sidetracked looking for many other things, inexorably, we can expect anxiety, restlessness, tension, agitation, in a word: a substandard type of life. By substandard I mean a way of life that is far from what Jesus died and rose from death to give us.
We can start by looking at all the stuff that we have piled up in our home, in the garage and in the attic. Then, we can peek inside our mind and heart. In our mind we have mostly worries, deadlines, pressing demands, tentative plans and a variety of dreams. In our heart we have love, gratitude, a marked sense of duty, admiration for people who made a difference in our life, fond memories intertwined with painful ones and remorse, disappointment, frustration, fear, resentment, bitterness, and that permanent, ever-present uneasy feeling that we could group under the umbrella of “restlessness” as well.
Thus, most of what we have piled up in our physical home and inside our inner-self results in a substandard lifestyle, unbecoming of a disciple of Jesus and thus, unacceptable to him. In this case, ours can be construed as a decent Christian life but still lacking the ONE THING that would make all the difference and fill us with inner peace.
By looking at the narrative of the Lord paying a visit to Abraham (Genesis 18:1-10) and of Jesus visiting with Martha and Mary at their home in Bethany (Luke 10:38-42), we should gather that the Lord wants to improve considerably our substandard lifestyle and reward our quest for joy and inner peace. By looking at how God’s visit to Abraham and Sarah ended, and how Jesus reacted to Martha’s request, we must conclude that the Lord is “all for us” and that we are his “only thought.”
This realization looks selfish and presumptuous until we get a better assessment of the extent of his love and of his care. Whenever we are praying in our inner room (Matthew 6: 6) or spending silent time in front of the Blessed Sacrament, or are deep in a contemplative mode, we must conclude that the God of the entire universe is in front of us, “all for us” and that he intends to stay with us for as long as we want and we feel comfortable with his realignment of our desires with his will. To this end, it is crucial that we limit what we say to the Lord to a bare minimum and, instead, concentrate on listening to him. He already knows what we must get rid of, what we lack and what we truly need: that ONE THING.
Silence and inner quiet are essential. In the silence of our inner room, we would soon realize that the Lord goes straight to align our deepest yet flawed desires with the part of his universal plan that involves us for the purpose of filling us with joy and inner peace.
At her wit’s end, Sarah went to the extreme of telling Abraham to have intercourse with her maidservant Hagar to give him a son. But this decision proved to have made the situation worse and increased their frustration. It was only after God’s visit designed to realign their desire for a son with his plan for a descendance as numerous as the stars in the sky, that God promised: “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah will then have a son.” Genesis 18:10
Likewise, slowly, the Lord shows us what we must get rid of and the plans we should abandon to attain what is best for us as we pursuit that ONE THING. But isn’t that the precise reason why God became flesh and pitched his tent among us? (John 1:14) But isn’t that what drove Jesus to crisscross the land of Israel for the length of his public ministry?
So, it is Jesus himself who is that ONE THING which we all need!
Wisely, Mary chooses to focus her entire being on Jesus, aligning her desires with God’s plan which involves her. Thus, she becomes the ideal disciple; she is reassured, enlightened, comforted, enriched and filled with inner peace. Simultaneously, Martha’s agitation pains the heart of Jesus because she has yet to focus on him; her flawed desire is to provide him and his disciples with impeccable hospitality; but her kindness is tainted by her need to control the situation to her personal satisfaction. Therefore, Mary’s decision to focus exclusively on Jesus increases Martha’s habitual restlessness.
From all this, we should learn to carve some time from our busy daily schedule to be alone with the Lord in our inner room with the door shut, to assess how much of Martha’s attitude is keeping us from realigning our plans with his. Poignantly, the “Our Father” is the only prayer Jesus taught us; and it is designed to fill our hearts with joy and inner peace.
Wisely, if we focus on him as the perfect Gift from the Father, we do not need to hoard a lot of things; with our daily bread assured, our worries can be kept to a minimum; in the Father’s universal Family we can live in harmony, counting on mutual forgiveness from which depends the Father’s forgiveness for our mistakes. And the words: “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” must be taken by us as an invitation to humbly abandon our ways and to strive for the perfect alignment of our desires and plans with the Father’s will. This is the secret to lasting joy for us as it has always been for Jesus. This is exactly what Jesus did.
“My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work.”
